MR is Leaving AR in the Dust: So Say These Mixed Reality Examples

In fact, defining MR as a cross between AR and VR is to do the technology an injustice. It does indeed bridge the gap between AR and VR, but it is much more than a halfway-house solution.

For example, AR consultants might utilize MR to enhance the augmented reality experience, perhaps by creating interactive holographic apps to overlay onto the physical environment. Meanwhile, virtual reality engineers might create MR software that makes greater use of virtual environments, where the real world becomes a secondary element of the overall experience.

In essence, there are three levels of immersion, or environments, that MR developers can create when building an application. At the AR end of the spectrum, we find enhanced environments that anchor digital content to specific locations in the user's real world. 

If you are using an enhanced-environment app with a device such as Microsoft’s Hololens headset, your real-world surroundings will form the central element of the experience. Then useful apps will be seemingly embedded in your surroundings, such as an MR shopping list overlaid onto the refrigerator door, or an MR television screen on your bedroom wall.

In the enhanced environment, you can manipulate and interact with the superimposed digital content to a far greater degree than in an augmented reality app.

Blended environments occupy the middle ground in the MR experience, comprised of a view of the user's physical surroundings, but with some of the objects or elements transformed digitally. This transformation might constitute a change of coloration or design, or the real-world object might become something else entirely. However, the general dimensions of the real-world objects would typically remain unchanged.

Immersive environments are the third level of MR. While they still reference the user’s real-world surroundings, a level of immersion can be created that borders on full-blown virtual reality.

In an immersive environment, the view in your headset might bear no obvious resemblance to the physical space and features around you, instead placing you in a completely unrelated scene. For example, your MR environment might be outdoors, while you are physically sitting on the couch in your living room. 

Of course, MR apps don’t have to strictly adhere to these three levels. Developers can create MR experiences that exist anywhere along the spectrum of AR to VR. This high degree of creative flexibility may be essential to the MR market’s strong growth, which along with AR is set to become bigger than pure VR within the next few years, as illustrated in the chart below.

In order to understand the extent to which MR can be adapted for specific purposes, let’s look at some real-world applications for enhanced, blended, and immersive environment MR technologies.

The following mixed reality examples highlight how blended environments are being used in product design and development to enhance or even supersede traditional concept creation methods.

Just as the medical field is using technology to complement cadavers, automobile designers are embracing MR to speed up the reimagining of current vehicle models and the development of concepts for new ones.

Ford was one of the first car manufacturers to embrace MR, which its engineers and designers now use in combination with traditional clay prototype designs and existing car models to create new designs more quickly and at a lower cost.

Ford uses Microsoft Hololens MR headsets and custom software to superimpose new design features onto their clay models and existing cars, enabling them to visualize how each change will look. 

The beauty of this approach is that while physical modeling is still necessary, MR eliminates the need for new clay prototypes every time designers want to explore a change or design feature. Instead, a single clay prototype becomes the base for an infinite number of design ideas. Other car-makers, including Volvo, are also utilizing MR for vehicle design.

While creating a full-scale clay model of a car is possible, if costly, this kind of prototyping isn’t realistic for construction architects. Until recently, their standard technique has been to create scaled-down 3D building information models (BIMs).

Now MR systems allow architects, building inspectors, and construction workers to see a virtual version of a structure in its actual location at the 1:1 scale. With Hololens and BIM MR software, architects can even venture inside their creations to evaluate and assess internal elements, highlight issues, and visualize changes using voice commands or hand gestures.

Once a construction project moves into the building phase, MR superimposes BIMs onto the actual, physical structure, enabling identification of any discrepancies between the design and the building, and precise placement of specialized equipment when required.

Safety is paramount on construction sites, so MR hardware is incorporated into hardhats, protecting architects from injury while they use blended reality to check the construction quality and planning schedule in real time.

Aside from the mixed reality examples above, enhanced, blended and immersive environment apps are undergoing experimentation and testing in many other sectors of industry and commerce. For example, the market for educational MR is already growing steadily, with research company Technavio projecting a compound annual growth rate of 59% by 2022.

MR interest is strengthening in many other sectors too. For example, AR company DAQRI found this out when it sought enterprise input and feedback for its MR headset and productivity software in 2017. More than 100 companies from multiple industries jumped at the chance to test the product.

Mobile AR is beginning to look like just a stepping-stone to something much more important. So it might be time to start thinking about MR’s potential uses for your industry—and even more importantly, how you might benefit from using it within your organization.